Speed Painting

I like to do a speed painting challenge with my intro high school students when we introduce painting to encourage them to mix colors, blend paint, and loosen up! This year I put together a video for the KAEA virtual fall conference to explain and demonstrate the concept.

Here are the "rules"

• Use only primary colors + black and white
• No pencils or drawing before painting
• No washing your brush- blend!
• Fill the entire page
• Move quickly before the paint dries

Here are some of last year's student speed paintings. I always grab a bag of ornamental gourds and sometimes some fruit for observation.

A student works on a speed painting

A student's painting on the left and one of my examples on the right. These were similar gourds but mine had green on the bottom.

I used some deceased butterflies I found as examples in my videos but students were happy to stick with gourds for their challenge. Maybe next year advanced students can do a more challenging subject!

Kindergarten Color Mixing

For my student teacher's first lesson, she wanted to review and explore color mixing with Kindergarten students. She started by reading them the story Mouse Paint, which is always fun.

My student teacher demonstrating proper picture book reading technique. :)

Next, the students got to mix colors by shaking hands! Each student got a dollop of primary colored tempera paint squirted on the palm of their hand and found a friend with a different color. The students made a handprint on paper with their new secondary color and wrote their name on the front with crayon in a later class period.

 After making their handprint, the students finger painted on the tables which we'd covered with big pieces of paper for the rest of class. We squirted other primary colors and let them have fun mixing and experimenting.

 You can imagine how excited the students were- this was a big hit! This lesson is best carried out with at least two adults in the room. I "subbed" for my student teacher when she was sick one day and it was a challenge to be the only one squirting paint and supervising all of the activity.

 Some of the students discovered they could add texture to the paint with their finger tips.

 When the table papers dried, we cut out the blobs of color which were used in a collage lesson with Kindergarten and 1st grade the following week.

Primary Lines

In the second half of the school year my Kinders needed to review lines and primary colors. We had been using the vocabulary, but I realized I probably hadn't been as explicit about it after the first introduction. Sometimes I forget how much repetition the students need when they only have art class once a week (if we don't miss school). This lesson plan is available on The smARTteacher.

On the first day of the project we reviewed lines and the students made a composition using many different kinds. This was also a good time to reinforce paintbrush technique and care. I showed how to make thin and thick lines by turning the brush different directions and talked about trying to go in one diction to make the lines smoother. They sure like to go back and forth to smooth out a line and end up making the lines fuzzier AND thicker.

On the second day when the black paint was dry, the students were given the primary colors and white to mix tints. The students watched the Sesame Street music video by OK Go while I filled paint palettes. 

I've been doing something a little different with a lot of liquid tempera painting projects. Instead of putting out water, which usually ends up getting added to the paint making it less opaque and dirty looking, I ask students to try to use all the paint on their brush before switching colors and then to just wipe on a paper towel before "dipping the tip" into a new selection. It works really well most of the time and saves a lot of headaches.

If a student missed the first day, I let them choose if they wanted to draw lines with sharpie or paint black lines and wait until the following class period to use colors.

On the third day some students decided to add collage elements or do more painting. Many started new projects and kept on going with the liquid tempera and mixing colors. 

 This would be a great beginning of the year project, but it works equally well for review at the end.

Kinder Circles

One of the first projects for my Kindergarten students this year was stamping and painting dots for International Dot Day. We talked about shapes when the students used empty play-doh containers to stamp circles into a composition. Some overlapped, some didn't. Some dragged the containers all over the paper which made it mostly turn black. I didn't encourage this but didn't make them stop. I might have said something like "Oh, you won't have much room to add color next week if you turn your paper all black!" but I was fine with them exploring the tool.

 In the second class, we talked about the primary colors and how they can be mixed to create secondary colors. Each table was give only primary colors and the students were encouraged to try creating new colors. My new painting management technique is to put out a sponge instead of giving out paper towels. Students clean their brushes in the shared water and then blot on the shared sponge. I think this idea came from Choice Without Chaos if I remember correctly! It has worked very well so far, though I still have students asking "What is the sponge for again?" The sponge is a lot more absorbent than the brown paper towels at school.

I used the opportunity to talk about paintbrush care since it was the first exposure to tempera paint for most students. They did a pretty good job for the first time! I asked them to "dip the tip", hold the paintbrush "like a pencil", and mix paint on the paper instead of mixing all the colors together on the tray. I love how the paintings turned out. Some painted inside each circle and some did not. Either way, I think they are beautiful! Some students even added crayon in the next class period. I am WAAAAY behind on this blogging thing! Oh, parenthood. The boys are worth it! :)

Kinder Primary Color Artwork

 One of my favorite Greg Percy songs from Songs in the Key of Art is called "The Red and Yellow Blues". Since I tried to coordinate a lesson for each grade with one of the Songs in the Key of Art before the assembly, the Red and Yellow Blues was an easy choice. The lesson is one I've used before with Kindergarten and it's always a lot of fun.

On day 1, we listened to the song to review the primary colors before the students were given tempera paint in each of the primary colors, plus white, and asked to paint whatever they wanted! Some went for nonobjective themes while others painted portraits, houses, whatever their little hearts desired.
On day 2, the students were given mosaic squares to glue to their paintings. the squares could be used to define or add details. By the way, bottled glue holds these on waaaay better than glue sticks.

Swirly Color Wheels

My student teacher wanted to do a color mixing lesson with Kindergarten. She had found an activity where kids mixed paint on plates by squishing it around inside plastic bags and as we talked about the logistics, this is what we came up with. Each student had a disposable plate with a little squirt of each of the primary colors on it. Miss Bennett talked to the students about how to use their special tool of the day- one index finger! The students followed along as she demonstrated pulling a little bit of two colors to mix in between to create a secondary color. After the three secondary colors were created, the students placed a circle of white paper on top and swirled it. (I inherited a ton of pre cut circles- I don't know what they are from but it was nice to use some of them!)

We kept all the plates and plan to use them as scales to form a dragon in the hallway for our East Asian studies.

Here are all the swirly color wheels displayed in the hallway around the giant collaborative color wheel in the center. The week before the swirly color wheel lesson, each of our 6 Kindergarten classes was assigned a primary or secondary color. The students cut 2-3 pictures or swatches out of a magazine for their class color and practiced glue stick skills to attach them to a large color wheel.

Kindergarten Color Mixing

Have you seen this super fun video from Sesame Street? The students (and I) loved it! After we watched it through once, they wanted to hear it again so we just replayed over and over while they worked and sang along!

Source: holykaw.alltop.com via Katie on Pinterest

What were they working on? In the first class, painting whatever they wanted as long as they were mixing primary colors to create secondary colors. We took a little break to work on clay projects then came back to these at the end of the school year. In the second class period, I gave one class paper mosaic tiles to add designs on top of their paintings, and the other black tempera paint to add their designs. Easy peasy.